One O’Clock Lab Band will return to Union Syndicate

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Evan McAlister | Staff Writer

@evan_McAlister

The One O’Clock lab band will return to the Union Syndicate at 9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3. Performances will be 9 p.m. to midnight Wednesdays and noon to 12:50 p.m. on Thursdays in the Syndicate, and other lab bands will begin playing next Tuesday.

The One O’Clock has been playing in the Gateway Center for the last two and a half years since the closing of the old union building.

“The Gateway is not somewhere students hang out,” said One O’Clock manager Craig Marshall. “We have high hopes that it’s going to be a good setup.”

Members of the One O’Clock are ready for a permeant playing space, too. Jazz studies senior John Sturino said they hope the new playing space would allow for their general public to attend more performances alongside the student audience.

“It was $5 to see the One O’Clock in the Gateway, now people can come and go at no cost to them,” Sturino said. “I hope that now more people outside the College of Music will be motivated to come check it out.”

The One O’Clock began as an extracurricular stage band in 1927 and became a curricular band in 1947. The university then launched the first jazz degree program in the world, and the One O’Clock would become the best of nine UNT lab bands, which are named for the hour of their rehearsal.

Since the 1970s, the band has received six Grammy nominations, the first and only college jazz band to have been nominated in the categories of Best Large Jazz Ensemble (Lab 75, 76, 09) and Best Instrumental Arrangement (Lab 89, 91, 09). This year they were nominated for Best Instrumental Composition.

Joshua Kauffman who has played with the One O’Clock for two years said the jazz program’s reputation drew him to UNT. He says it’s every jazz major’s dream when they come to UNT.

“I wanted to come here because of the jazz program,” Kauffman said. “All the guys that I want to be like went here. It wasn’t even a question of where I would go.”

Moving back into the Syndicate, the band hopes the more central location will allow the band to become a bigger part of the community.

“Being at a jazz performance is drastically different from listening to a recording,” Sturino said. “I hope people give it a chance.”

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